Our son’s current favorite toy is the Laugh & Learn Learning Home*, essentially a big, plastic, electronic facade. Dear Fisher-Price: please fire your entire marketing department and hire some guys who can at least think up a product name that doesn’t use the same word twice in a row.

Every part of this toy makes noise. When you open the door there’s a creaking sound, and a voice cries out “hello!” a tone so impossibly cheerful that it makes me want to go goth. When you open the shutters it sings “How Much For That Doggie In The Window?” And the Squirrelly enjoys nothing more than to press the doorbell thirty thousand times in a row (“ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong! ding-dong!”), until mama and papa are so irritated that they find themselves in a screaming match over whether “meatloaf” is one word or two.

Also, when the mailbox is opened it says “you’ve got … letters!” I’m probably imagining the slight hesitation between “got” and “letters,” but in that illusory pause it almost seems as if I can hear the Fisher-Price voicework woman thinking “oh man: if I say ‘mail’ AOL is going to sue me so hard that even my tattoos will be repossessed …”

* Gratuitous hyperlink to product page to ensure mention of this post on Daddy Types.